From Publishers Weekly
A veteran journalist and manager in the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain, Gelsanliter wanted a successful, independent operation for his week-in-the-life profile. The Dallas Morning News fit those requirements and was also facing a city with changing demographics and economics. Gelsanliter chronicles years of empire building in a rich study of the Dallas Morning News and how it put stakes down to become perhaps the South's most important newspaper. Here, editor Burl Osborne lives "each day as if it might be his last"; executive editor Ralph Langer and sports editor Dave Smith are giants who walk the Earth; publisher Robert Decherd (the great-grandson of founder G.B. Dealey) is a man looking to bring a dynasty back to power. Reporters get less "screen time" here, but the business of journalism may well be more important to News execs than journalism itself. By describing one week in the paper's routine, Gelsanliter explains not only how the business works, but why the News may fail in its minority coverage, how it tries to reach suburban dwellers and why certain articles appear where and how they do. When the News's competitor, the Times-Herald, folds, the reader feels like part of a grand and well-fought campaign and comes away with a new understanding of the Fourth Estate. A fascinating study in watching the Watchmen. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Fresh Ink began as a portrait of a week, November 4 to 10, 1991, at the Dallas Morning News; broader issues intruded when, 4 weeks later, 18 years of "newspaper war" ended when the rival Dallas Times-Herald shut down, selling its assets to the News. Gelsanliter was general manager of the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News during that city's news wars, which led to the defeat of the Philadelphia Bulletin. Given broad access to decision makers at the Morning News and A. H. Belo Corporation, the family-dominated company that owns the paper, Gelsanliter sketches "the players" and then moves through the week (including a hotly contested local election), highlighting the ways key news decisions are made and the techniques editors and executives use. Then he discusses the end of the Times-Herald, and the new demands the monopoly paper faced. The Morning News' owners earn full credit for their long-term view and nongimmicky approach to journalism, but their insistence on "positivism" and decorum, Gelsanliter suggests, may alienate segments of an increasingly diverse community. A lively, enlightening case study of newspaper journalism. Mary Carroll
